Heading Out and Extending Dates

First off, I'd like to let everyone know that I am in fact going to be able to make my flight after all. After freaking out by spending the whole weekend wondering weather it really was possible to get a passport in one day, my fears turned out to be unfounded. Although, the company that I went through did not instill confidence in frustrated travelers. I showed up at 8am to have the secretary tell me there was no list and they had no idea what I was talking about. Then the "head secretary" told me that there's no way anyone could guarantee a one day passport cause you don't know what the passport office does. Finally the guy I'd talked to on Friday showed up (45 minutes after I got there) and told me not to worry...that it'd be done between 4 and 5pm. So I showed up at 4:30 and they told me that I would have to wait about an hour cause they didn't have it yet. So I waited for an hour and watched the "hoodlum courier" service bring random documents. Seriously the couriers were these teens that wore sideways hats, sagged, strutted and looked like they were more likely to sell your passport to the highest bidder on the street than to deliver it to you. So tomorrow at 2:30 pm EST, Em and I fly away.

On another note, I am not returning to the states until at least December. I contacted a professor at UC San Diego and asked whether I could work on his excavation project in Jordan that's from October to December. He looked over my resume and decided to allow me a spot in his Field School. So I will be staying in the Middle East for about 6 months. It should a great experience and allows me the opportunity to see whether I'd really like to do field archaeology for the next 5 or 20 years.

So cau to all for now...I will update when I can....hope all is going well for everyone who reads this.